Posted on 06/25/2002 1:20:24 PM PDT by GeneD
The American space agency Nasa has grounded its space shuttle fleet indefinitely after finding small cracks in fuel pipes in the main engines of two shuttles. The cracks, discovered on shuttles Atlantis and Discovery, will delay the scheduled 19 July launch of Columbia, due to carry the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, into space.
The cracks were found in metal liners used to direct fuel flow inside the main rocket motor's fuel pipes on shuttles Atlantis and Discovery.
"The concern is that ... if a piece were to crack off and go down into the engine, would that damage the engine and cause it to shut down," said Nasa spokeman James Hartsfield. "Whether that is something that could actually happen, we don't know yet."
Safety concern
"These cracks may pose a safety concern and we have teams at work investigating all aspects of the situation," said Ron Dittemore, NASA's shuttle program manager. "This is a very complex issue and it is early in the analysis. Right now there are more questions than answers."
Engineers found the first crack during an inspection of "flow liners" - thin pieces of metal that aid the flow in fuel pipes - as they were installing engines in Atlantis more than a week ago.
Subsequent testing found other cracks in both Atlantis, which is 17 years old, and Discovery, which is 19. Columbia, the oldest of the four shuttles in the fleet at 21 years old, is to be inspected.
Because it takes a week or so to remove a shuttle's engines and the same amount of time to reinstall them, Columbia's forthcoming mission on 19 July has been delayed indefinitely.
NASA engineers will try to determine if the problem is a flaw introduced at the time the flow liners were installed in the shuttles or whether the cracks are a problem of age.
The liners act as sleeves inside the hydrogen fuel line in the plumbing for the shuttle's engine. NASA is working to determine whether the problem is limited to that one liner, which was in a bellows, where the fuel line bends.
"We've never seen these (cracks) before," said James Hartsfield. "The flow liners have been in the shuttles since day one. We have begun an analysis to try to understand it."
And the taxpayers rejoiced! We'll be spared a few multi-million dollar experiments on newts in space or whatever.
Well, at least we know we won't have any major earthquakes in the meantime (if you've seen the movie "Conspiracy Theory", you'll know the reference).
What is the estimated life expectancy of a space shuttle?
Care to guess what the cost of inspecting and reasearching the problem is? Probably will cost us time and a half of actual missions.
EBUCK
EBUCK
My nightmare scenario has been losing a Shuttle before I was a Boeing employee, and having the offer yanked when NASA instituted a hiring freeze.
At least that cannot happen now.
EBUCK
Uh, what about the storage costs for the now obsolete GoreSat? A megabuck/year. AND the possibility
that they'll be able to refurbish it and orbit it.
I wouldn't go out and spend any savings...
Yes. There has been a crew (not the same people) on the ISS for about a year and a half.
(Yes, I know there is a Soyuz docked there, but I would still feel much more comfortable with a NASA option a well)
Don't believe anything is docked there now. Endeavour just came back last week. I think she will be delayed for her next flight because they had to put her down at Edwards.
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